To thine own self be true

(death-mask of young John Keats)

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific–and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise–
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
–John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”

……………………..

The spring of 1967, English 300–grade 12, Silver Heights Collegiate, Winnipeg. Mr. George Brown’s class. The context–he invited each of us to pick a poem from our poetry anthology and to read it and talk about it, possibly analyzing it.

I had cased the entire book and picked this one. Simply put, it spoke to me in volumes–to my close connection with nature, my exponentially increasing interest in and love of words from grade 12 on, my essential core interest in possibilities and beautiful discoveries, and my only-child-based solitude. It was a very freeing, liberating poem, consciousness-wise. Very much an objective correlative of where I was at then and where I wanted to go, what I wanted to be, what I would eventually become. A romantic, a lover, a writer, a poet, a teacher, a performer, a possibilitarian, a seeker and discoverer.

I memorized those words for the oral recitation; they emblazoned my mind, heart, and soul. I spoke with passion about the meaning and purpose of the poem. It was a true defining moment of being, performance, and turning point in my life. I had been marked for a life of literature–both reading and writing thereof. I would go on to teach 3-5 thousand senior high kids about literature in a 30 year career. I would go on to talk to thousands of English teachers across Canada, again, in a 30 year span from 1980-2010. As a singer-guitarist-songwriter, I would perform for several thousand more people (kids and adults) from 1969-2003. I would go on to write over 60 widely-authorized texts and guides for Canadian senior high students and teachers, books that would eventually sell over a million copies by the 2000s. I would go on to write hundreds of poems as well as songs, stories, and plays and read them in many venues and have well over 100 published, winning contests along the way. I would return to my teacher in the 1980s and tell him personally what this opportunity had meant to me. I would finally remember this moment and tell about it here today.

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;–then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
–John Keats, “When I Have Fears”
……………………………….

The search is a lifelong one, of course, amidst the transitoriness of change and time passing. Happy is the poet or person who can say he or she has found what the poet sought unsuccessfully in vain, succumbing to T.B at 26.

Certainly there is much–money, fame, celebrity, etc.–that pales viewed against the prospect of “the faery power of unreflecting love”. One learns much about the sensibility of both poet and blogger in this one.

(a distant memory)

Early 1950s. Preschool age, likely 3. Union Station. Built by the architects who built Grand Central Station. The wonderful glorious massive dome so high. The panels of colorful alluring images of trains and places. The great clock and humongous vestibule. The black and white men wearing red caps everywhere. The shouting, the trunks, carts, and confusion.

And then the descent down a long ramp into the bowels ‘where the trains would come’. An underground made up of many doors on both sides through which one could see the bottoms of lighted steep staircases going up to…? And the large crowd of unfamiliar faces, a mob in fact, anxiously anticipating what?

And then a strange loud noise which became the loudest noise in the world. Louder than thunder, visibly shaking this tense scene. Pounding, chugging, thundering above, overhead! Was the roof going to collapse? The loudest whistle and bells imaginable. A steam locomotive–a truly great technological monster to be reckoned with–had arrived. And then doors opened somewhere and the crowd pushed toward them and we were suddenly going up, up, toward the streamed daylight, the noise of unseen yelling human voices, clanging and clanking, and the sound of the mighty engines exhaling, gasping steam.

The other, later place of arrival–Kawa, Ontario–an opening literally slashed in deep woods on the Canadian Shield where my smiling hard-drinking uncle was ‘station-master’, a place with no roads or other people, only accessible by railway. The trains never stopped at Kawa and ours had slowed to a crawl. The conductor handed me to my mother who had jumped off first and walked fast with my uncle beside the moving car. It would be the same on the way back home, in reverse.

And while we were there–the solitude except for fast trains passing, the mosquitoes, the pungent forest smells, the bars on the window station to keep out bears, the lanterns at night, a Quebec heater, the old flat wind-up portable phonograph wobbly playing 78s, the whiskey bottle, cribbage board, and playing cards perpetually on the table. I (or of my uncle’s kids) nearly falling into the well–a wooden cover over a patch of ground had been left ‘off’.

There is much in our early lives which is and seems irrational, even terrifying and bizarre–a perfect introduction to more of the same to follow, intermittently, in the rest of our lives. Much that is filed away as a forgotten long ago part of the life flow. And maybe sixty years later resurrected somewhere in what begins as a private, solitary moment–a man at a laptop on an early prairie morning in late August, in another century–all the adults mentioned in this piece long deceased, and only the moment itself, briefly, subjectively, remembered and recorded by ‘a lone survivor’.

(for my parents Rose and Del)

A hot August night when I was 6 or 7. Travelling with my young cheerful aunt by bus across town with my parents to the CP station at the Royal Alexandra Hotel. Standing with her with less than an hour to go when my mother asked her about her ticket. She began rummaging her clothes madly in search of it. My Dad was immediately assigned to go via taxi (a luxury then for us) back across town to do the impossible–find it and return before the train left.

It was announced that the train was ready to go–all passengers aboard, when my father suddenly rushed in. “It was lying on the kitchen table,” he said breathlessly. And then my aunt abruptly, hurriedly ran to the train entrance, leaving us for our long, slow, familiar, mundane return home by bus. My poor parents, who had trouble at the best of those lean fifties times in rubbing two nickels together.

My aunt and parents–everything a stranger would ever need to know about who and what they essentially were. My parents–responsible and perpetually doing for others, ever stuck with the bill. My aunt–so cheerful but scattered–who left messes behind her everywhere she went in her carefree, but oh-so-careless life.

An elderly Chinese man about 5’4″. Viewed sideways, a slightly pear shape to his figure.

No one else in the garage on a warm Saturday afternoon. Quietly and painstakingly folding men’s pants on a table. Occasionally measuring them with a tape measure he had just retrieved from his car.

(“Do you have a tape measure?” he had asked.

“No,” we answered, assuming he wanted to buy one.)

We were all surprised when he returned with a measuring tape and began to examine the pants more closely, knowledgably folding them in a neat, concise pile. Courtesy? Attention to detail? A previous life in a tailor shop? A solitary sensuous experience? We then noticed the pants he was picking out were similar in style to the ones he was currently wearing.

Finally, he brought out his selection and paid without any haggling over price, his genuine smile revealing some missing teeth. He had found exactly what he needed and wanted. He nodded at us, and my daughter and I bowed our heads slightly in courtesy to him, which he obviously appreciated.

He was on his way down the driveway when he noticed the Tibetan meditation book and CD, and happily came back to pay yet again (his third time; he had previously bought a VHS of Dr. Paul Lamm’s Tai Chi video for older adults.

Garage sales always have their troughs as well as crests. But this gentle man made our entire day and gracefully transcended the August afternoon silence.

A dog day afternoon, dogsitting Saturday.

Observation: The dog’s eyes constantly watching you. “What’s on now?” “Are you going to be sitting there for a while?” “Where are you going?” “Will you be back soon?” “Are we eating soon?”(one of my favorites) “Are we going out for a walk?” “Where’s my bathroom now?” “When will I be going homes?” An ongoing, neverending experience of observation and, in the humans’ case, one of being observed for various cues and information (pets easily seek info as much as humans).

Anticipation: For the pet, perpetually. Again to do with possibilities (pets’ lives being about possibilities as much as humans’)–anticipation, desire, hope–all for what might happen, especially for what is already doggily known to be possible.

Dependency: If you have ever owned a dog, the dependency of the animal on the owner for just about everything, including shelter, food, exercise, play, etc. And when the pet goes down–as in sickness or decline–you quickly find out about responsibilities you weren’t expecting, about the limits of your own caring and loyalty–very instructive and heart-wrenchingly taxing. The Price of Love.

All that I’ve just said applies to very young children who take their cues from their adult role models, who anticipate whatever family adventure or activity, and who need parents for everything from toilet-training to meals, to play, etc.

I will definitely say that taking care of both pet and child (or grandchild) are similar experiences, though the pet usually requires less engagement. The play possibilities are greater with the child, though I have seen the intelligence of poodles and their play, and know of how some breeds–like Jack Russells or Border collies need a lot of exercise. Of the heavy-to-carry dogs, like St. Bernard’s or Standard poodles, there are more implications for responsibility and difficulty just because of their sheer size.

Unconditional love? Especially obvious with dogs if you’ve ever ‘come home’. Children, too, though this excitement eventually diminishes: “Oh, hi, Mom.” Well, isn’t that the main reason why many people want to own a dog in their heart-of-hearts–that Lassie-like unconditional loyalty? Sometimes reciprocated when the human goes over the edge to save the animal in a life-or-death situation. Built-in strong, deep relationships quite often as much so as some human relationships.

Zero understanding or appreciation of history and other cultures (except natives, and that’s not heartfelt–that’s purely for political purposes).
Imagine omitting references to anti-Semitism and the no. of Jews killed on a Holocaust monument!

Michelangelo.
Just finished watching the outstanding 1949 b & w AA-winning documentary on his life and work. A real knockout. In terms of grandeur and significant output, he easily outdistanced Leonardo and everybody else in these three areas of Western civilization. Painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling on his back would have been enough to seal to his claim as greatest painter alone.

T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, of course, is one because it changed the course of modern poetry and dealt with the greatly-changed Western world after WWI. It embodied the angst and ambiguity of the early 20th century.

Allen Ginsberg’s “Kaddish” would be the other. I revisited it last night on Ginsberg’s 63-minute live reading on the rare old Rhino Records boxset Holy Soul Jelly Roll. It’s an epic poem about madness, death, and how a very insane mother in a family affected everyone in the family and destroyed it as well as marking her young son Allen for life, putting him through hell (Ginsberg quotes Conrad’s “The horror! The horror!”) no child should ever experience and simultaneously making him into the empathic great poet of the Beat Generation. The reading is fantastic; no other 20th century reading or poem comes close to matching the depths of anguish in this epic.

(I discuss “Howl”, in the Nov.2. 2019 entry, as one of the three greatest twentieth-century poems.)

“Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.”

(the cellar wine casks at Mission Hill winery near Kelowna)

(the feel of chickadees eating sunflower seeds off my hand in Laurier Park in the fall)

(playing short improvised poems on my metallophone daily)

(hearing the clip-clop of a horse pulling a carriage ride on the back streets of Victoria)

(revisiting the earliest story that made a lifelong impression in grade 1)